Improper attempts at disposal of municipal solid waste through the years has aggravated the problem of contamination of the ground, of the air and most seriously the ground water in and around unlined existing landfills. This pollution includes contaminants that are known causes of cancer. In many communities this contamination has resulted in the condemnation of a community's drinking water source. Other communities now utilizing massburn incineration as their principal means of refuse disposal have been cited by the EPA for harmful emissions containing cancer-causing dioxions and furions. Fallout from contaminated hazardous incinerator ash (containing hazardous household wastes, metals, plastics and glass) has also been cited as a danger to community health.
It has also been proven by the Federal government that this fallout is also evident many miles down wind from the massburn incinerator emitting invisible toxic fumes (acid rain or incinerator fallout). The safe operation of massburn incinerators is also dependent upon an auxiliary fuel (principally natural gas) to burn fumes generated by burning unprocessed solid waste. This causes a dangerous air pollution climactic change that scientists attribute to a problem known as a "warming trend of the ozone layer".
Nationwide the trend in all communities has been to transport bulk unprocessed municipal solid waste to remote landfills or to a central disposal means. This inefficient transport of refuse has resulted in highway congestion and excessive exhaust pollution resulting in damage to vegetation along the route. It has also contributed significantly to the escalation of tax demands found necessary to support the runaway refuse disposal costs.